Cars Cause Congestion

Komanoff found that every car entering the CBD causes an
average of 3.23 person-hours of delays. Multiply that by $39.53—a
weighted average of vehicles’ time value within and outside the CBD—and
it turns out that the average weekday vehicle journey costs other New
Yorkers $128 in lost time.

He translates all traffic impacts—delays, collisions, injuries, air
pollution—into dollars and cents; that way, it’s easy for users to
compare the benefits and costs of different plans. He has even come up
with a plan of his own that would, according to his calculations,
collect $1.3 billion in motorist tolls per year—all of which would be
spent on improving public transit—and save $2.5 billion in time costs by
reducing delays. To that, add $190 million from decreased mortality as a
result of making streets more bicycle- and pedestrian-friendly, $83
million in collision damage reduction, and $34 million in lower CO2
emissions.

he produced a detailed statistical analysis of pedestrian and cyclist
deaths—it showed that casualties are not random, unpredictable accidents
but the foreseeable result of given traffic conditions.

Comments

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That is a great article and a very ambitious plan. It'd be amazing to implement, but I could definitely see a lot of backlash, especially from the gps monitoring used to track and charge drivers. Guess we'll just have to route for him and see what happens.